US TENNIS
January 1991
1990 Most Improved Pros
Pete Sampras/Dreams do come true
By David Higdon

Between The Lines/Our 1990 Most Improved Pros

At the beginning of the summer it seemed we'd already found our best candidates for our Most Improved Pro awards. Yugoslavs Monica Seles and Goran Ivanisevic lit up the tennis scene with their exciting games and personalities. But it was Pete Sampras, the quiet Californian, whose personality has been described as "eerily calm," who shot past the field in the home stretch of the season in the U.S. Open to snatch the honors away from Ivanisevic (see page 32).

In interviews with the player himself, his coaches and his family, Senior Editor David Higdon found that Sampras is no ordinary young man; he's just a young man who's trying to remain ordinary and trying not to let the wave of popularity on which he's riding drown him.

David spent some time with Sampras at an exhibition he played after the Open. Sampras bantered easily on the fairways with the corporate guests, but later, in a press conference, David was surprised by the transformation as Sampras became visibly uncomfortable. "I hope that's what came out in the article," says David. "He's clearly bright and aware, and I don't think the public's seen that side yet. In front of the cameras, he's not himself. It was a sharp contrast, really surprising. Over the years I think he'll warm up to that and get better."

Why not? That's what he's been doing all along.

Contributing Editor Peter Bodo found French champion Monica Seles the opposite: She loves the attention, and she knows how to handle it (page 36). Also in this issue: our new column, "Winners" (page 23), which features some passionate, but not-so-famous people in our game; and our 24th Annual Camps & Clinics guide (page 67).
-- Donna Doherty, Editor

Wood club in hand, Pete Sampras squinted down the long, empty fairway. He could barely make out the flag on the green ahead even though it flapped violently in the wind. A wide ravine -- thirsty for white dimpled balls -- ran in front of this third green at Waterway Hills in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Walls of dense trees cupped its three other sides.

Sampras would swing a more familiar and reliable club later this sunny September day at the GTE Southern Pro Classic, an exhibition tennis tournament. But standing in the middle of the 445-yard, par-5 hole, Sampras' only thoughts involved the distant cup. As he prepared to launch his ball, he glanced over at the best golfer in his foursome, a retired airline executive.

"I don't know, Pete," the man said in a refined Southern drawl. "That ravine's about 200 yards from here. That's a lot of club you got there, but it's probably not enough to clear the ravine. You might want to lay up on the fairway in front of it."

"You think I oughta use an iron instead, huh?" asked Sampras.
"Yep. Just lay it up there."

Sampras unleashed his smile, a full-facer that stretches his cheeks back to his ears and vaults those bushy eyebrows into his hairline. A naturally charming grin, on this day, it's chock full of cockiness.

Yet who could blame Sampras? Only three weeks earlier, this 19-year-old kid waltzed through the U.S. Open, dipping Thomas Muster, Ivan Lendl, John McEnroe and Andre Agassi along the way. He began the year ranked No. 81 in the world before whittling that ranking down to No. 5, earning TENNIS magazine's 1990 male Most Improved Pro award. For someone who's been walking on water, what's so tough about blasting a ball over it?

"I didn't come here to lay up," he stated.

Sticking with the wood, Sampras crushed the ball. And, sure enough, it carried more than 200 yards. Only at the last moment, it sliced into the trees, careening into the next fairway. Sampras shrugged and jumped behind the wheel of his golf cart. "Next time," he cracked.

Certainly he would have been in a better position if he had followed the advice of the older, more experienced golfer. But maybe next time he'll hit it straight. The shot will not send leaves crashing to a premature death; instead, it will bound delicately onto the manicured green, rolling inches from the cup. Sampras will thrust his two arms into the air, just like he did at the U.S. Open, and showcase the full-facer.

"If there's one thing that Pete's [U.S. Open] win showed," says pro Jay Berger, "it's that dreams do come true."

Dreams do come true, but until they do, dreamers like Pete Sampras must face the conformists, the Babbitts that clutter the sport of tennis. As a gangly, introverted junior tennis player, "experts" constantly offered him their unsolicited advice: Dump your egg-head, pencil-neck coach; play in your own age group instead of competing against older juniors; stick with your two-handed backhand instead of switching to a one-hander.

Then he tuned pro, at age 16, never having won a major junior title, and the criticism intensified: You're too lazy to be a champion; you should have stayed in high school, then played college tennis; you can't handle the pressure of the pros. Coaches turned down offers to work with him; others that accepted eventually bailed out from frustration. "Pete Sampras has been groomed for mediocrity mentally," a top American tennis coach told TENNIS just prior to the U.S. Open.

So who could blame Pete Sampras for disregarding even friendly advice on the golf course? Suggestions, admonitions, warnings: He listens, but will not likely heed them. Skepticism reigns in Sampras' mind; distrust in others has become a reinforced habit.

When asked to share his thoughts after the U.S. Open, Sampras told the Stadium Court crowd: "Whatever I do the rest of my career, I'll always be a U.S. Open champion." Sampras was answering more than a TV interviewer's question. He was answering all the naysayers. He was telling them -- in his polite, unassuming way -- that he was right and they were wrong.

And even though he thanked and acknowledged the contribution of Dr. Pete Fischer, the brilliant pediatrician who had nurtured, molded and shaped Sampras from age 7 into a world-class tennis player, Sampras also was quietly answering his former coach. When Sampras aced Agassi on match point, he proved that even Fischer, the man Sampras believed always was right, had been wrong.

Lounging in a Myrtle Beach hotel room, Pete Sampras juggled an ice bag on and off his sore shins as we discussed his younger days. I asked about his decision to compete against older juniors.

"A lot of parents," he said, "and a lot of people disagreed with me. They always said I should play in my own age group, and this and that." He paused, rolling his eyes. ''What are those people saying now?"

And the backhand switch -- did many people feel that also was a bad idea?

"Everyone did," he answered quickly. "Every coach that I spoke to, every player, everybody. Except for my family and Fischer. That tells you how good Pete is."

The two Petes began playing tennis together in 1979, but it wasn't until almost three years later that the pediatrician, an essential person in many children's lives, realized his importance to the young Greek-American boy from Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. As a Christmas gift, the 10-year-old Sampras presented Fischer with a framed photograph of the two of them following a tournament victory. The inscription read: ''To Pete Fischer, my best friend and coach."

Soterios (Sam) Sampras, Pete's father, had asked Fischer to coach his son, mistaking the doctor in glasses for a tennis pro at the Jack Kramer Tennis Club in Rolling Hills Estates. Instead, Fischer, a man with an IQ near 200, agreed to teach the natural athlete with the two-handed strokes something altogether different. "I teach genius," says Fischer. "But you can't be a genius if you don't have the fundamentals."

So Fischer sent Sampras to Robert Lansdorp, Tracy Austin's former coach, to learn how to hit ground strokes. Larry Easley, another Los Angeles-area pro, taught Sampras serve-and-volley basics. Del Little worked on the boy's footwork, using match tapes of Rod Laver, who would become the standard of greatness against which Sampras will forever be measured by Fischer, to drive home the lessons.

Naturally, conflicts occurred with so many minds working on the same body. At one tournament, Fischer and Lansdorp watched the scrawny Sampras duff a service return against a taller, stronger foe.

"You charge so much money," said Fischer. "Why don't you teach him how to step in on his service returns?"

"Well, you charge so much money [as a pediatrician]," Lansdorp growled back. "Why don't you make him grow?"

Sampras did grow eventually, but not until after Fischer's controversial decisions to play him in older age groups ("Your best competition is a peer, and Pete's peers were three years older than he.") and to scrap his best shot, the two-handed backhand. Fischer feels two-handers lack the "feel" for the racquet needed to be great volleyers. "There's never been any great serve-and-volley player with a two-handed backhand," he says, "and there never will be, either."

The stroke change sent the 14-year-old Sampras' confidence and national ranking crashing down. "He hit a large number of balls over the fence -- some accidentally and some deliberately -- because it was so frustrating," recalls Fischer.

"My junior career was mediocre, but it was a question of developing my game," says Sampras. "I always had long-term goals, or at least Pete did, and he influenced me on that. Pete was always looking to the future, to the Grand Slams."

"There were years and years of people telling me that I was crazy," says Fischer. "People who should have known better. I remember one pro saying that another ranked junior was going to be a better player; another pro saying Pete wouldn't make it at all. I didn't like the second-guessing, but that just went with what I was doing, which was to build the perfect tennis player."

Inevitably, a construction project on a maturing young man would encounter some snags. Sampras may not be a high school graduate, but he's clearly a bright teenager. He's also a typical teen: stubborn, impatient, often combative. He recoiled from Fischer, who admits to trying to put his brain into Sampras' body.

"Whenever he watched me play, I felt there was a little old conscience behind me," says Sampras. "If I hit a stupid shot, he was going to tell me about it because he sees everything. He remembers every point. He's so smart that he thinks I should be perfect every time. It made me nervous when he was watching."

When Sampras turned pro in 1988, Fischer passed day-to-day coaching duties to John Austin, Tracy's brother. At the time, however, Sampras was, according to Fischer, "in full flower of his adolescent rebellion," resulting in a short-lived relationship with Austin. Even a week-long stay at the home of Ivan Lendl during the 1988 Nabisco Masters produced little immediate change in Sampras' attitude; Lendl told Fischer he found Sampras to be an instinctive player, but one not willing to work very hard at honing those instincts. (The exact opposite of Lendl himself.)

Sampras spent 1989 hovering near No. 100 in the rankings. Fischer and Sampras argued constantly, resulting in some "pretty significant fight," according to Fischer. Before they called it quits late last year, Fischer made sure his sole student realized that the breakup would shatter Sampras' dream.

"[Fischer] told me there's no way I could win the U.S. Open or Wimbledon without him," recalls Sampras. "It scared me because I thought he was always right. I'm thinking, maybe I need him."

"Did I think he would win [the U.S. Open]? No," admits Fischer. "I figured if he couldn't work for Lendl, and he couldn't work for Gottfried, and he couldn't work for me, he was never going to work."

Ultimately, Sampras did work for someone: himself. After splitting from Fischer, Sampras chose to spend two weeks at Nick Bollettieri's Tennis Academy, lifting weights, running and playing tennis under the supervision of pro Joe Brandi. He then traveled alone to the 1990 Australian Open, where he reached the fourth round, equaling his career-best Grand Slam showing. In February, he won his first pro title, the U.S. Indoors at Philadelphia. A hip flexor injury and a disappointing first-round loss at Wimbledon temporarily slowed the ascent, but Sampras, with the low-key Brandi now firmly entrenched as his coach, remained on course. He reached his peak at the U.S. Open.

"I think I lit a fire under his pants," says Brandi, a former journeyman pro. "I told him, 'You should treat tennis like your business. If you don't prepare well, someone is going to steal the food from your table.'"

"I worked my butt off," says Sampras. "And now that I'm working hard, it's in my mind what I have to do to be a top-10, top-5 player. I don't want to be done with my career and think of all this talent I had and I let it all go to waste just because of not working hard."

With mind and body working together, Sampras doesn't plan to slow down. Following a post-Open exhibition victory over Lendl in Dallas, Sampras arrived home at Bollettieri's near midnight. He picked up the phone, called trainer Pat Etcheberry and arranged to meet him for a late-night workout. Under the light of the moon, Sampras sprinted back and forth in the white sand. That evening's dreams would have to wait until later.